A BIOMASS ESTIMATE OVER THE HARVARD FOREST USING FIELD MEASUREMENTS WITH RADAR AND LIDAR DATA

The National Research Council's decadal survey recommended DESDynI as one of the high priority missions for NASA. The mission envisions an InSAR/Lidar instrument for observing ecosystem structures on global scales with high spatial resolutions. Consistent and highly resolved global maps of biomass and carbon stocks require highly accurate observations of vegetation, in fact it is expected that such accuracies would require a combination of the high vertical precision of Lidar observations and the large spatial extent of SAR/InSAR measurements. Here we analyze radar backscatter data along with biomass estimates from a field campaign conducted in the Harvard forest in Massachusetts, USA.